Herb GrayLeader of the Government in the House of Commons and Solicitor General of Canada

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise a brief point of order of which I have just given you notice. The point of order is for the purpose of allowing me to make a correction to today's Hansard . I would have raised this earlier but this matter has just been brought to my attention.

During today's question period I answered a question in part as follows: "Mr. Speaker, Olson is not personally in possession of any of the videotapes in question. Second of all, the lawyer in question is in possession of five of them. He has previously undertaken not to make them public, but in any event I am advised that legal action is being undertaken on behalf of the crown to regain possession of the tapes from Olson".

It is clear from the context here that I was referring to Olson's lawyer. As I say, it was just brought to my attention that I ended a sentence with the word Olson, creating an apparent contradiction with what I said at the beginning of my answer. I wish to confirm that I was referring to Olson's lawyer when I said that legal action is being undertaken on behalf of the crown to regain possession of certain tapes.

Colleagues, I have a request that the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca be given a few seconds to wrap up. I see by the clock there are only a few seconds remaining. Rather than go into a full debate I am going to give the member for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca the remaining time to wrap this up.

I would like to thank my colleagues for Mississauga West, Vancouver South, Kootenay East and Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup for their kind and heartfelt interventions on this enormous humanitarian issue.

In closing, I would just like to say to every member in the House that as has been mentioned passionately by the members here from across party lines, this issue is one of non-partisanship. It is an issue of basic humanitarianism. It is an issue that we as Canadians stand for as part of our soul in being fair and equitable people who want to do the right thing and fight for those who are most dispossessed in the world.

I hope the government will bring forward a bill forthwith on this issue calling for Canada to play a leadership role in banning anti-personnel land mines.